


Theresa, World Hero?

by The_Shipper_Of_Heart



Category: Empress Theresa - Norman Boutin
Genre: Rewrite, this is just for fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:00:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Shipper_Of_Heart/pseuds/The_Shipper_Of_Heart
Summary: A rewrite to the infamous 'Empress Theresa'. Adding/omitting some parts here and there.~~~A ten year old girl in Massachusetts life changes when a mysterious fox omits a bright light that hits her. She starts to get the feeling of being followed, only to run into a woman who tells her about the white light, and what it means for herEight years later she is a known figure to many, she is looked to for guidance and help when trouble arises. She is willing to help-its the right thing to doBut is this what she really wants to do? Is she happy?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	Theresa, World Hero?

The crowd seemed like a blur. Perhaps it was just me trying to get away from it all and attempting to tune them all out, or perhaps it was the endless camera flashes going off that blinded me. People all over were trying to get my attention, shouting my name followed by a round of questions. I gave them all the same response I had been and had told myself to give-’no comment.’ Around me were the closest people in my life. The ones who stuck by me from the start and had truly believed in me and actually listened. People liked to liken us to that of Jesus and his disciples-but being related to a biblical figure was not something I fancied. The media still did it, despite my objections.

Through the blur, something stuck out to me-it was a little girl in the crowd, presumably there with her parents. When we made eye contact. She smiled her biggest smile. Judging by the teeth missing and her appearance, she had to be no more than four years old. I smiled back, it seemed like the only people in the world I couldn’t be mad at for their blindness and faith in my every move was children- they didn’t know any better. Their parents raised them to think of me as some kind of celebrity. Poor child. She must think I love this life and enjoy the attention.

The true reality was I was very unhappy. All I wanted was to get my life back. But everytime I begged to be left alone, it didn’t last before I was pulled back into the light and turned to for help. Under the little girl’s arm, she was holding a fox plush. It was very soft looking with beady eyes, a black nose, and a little smile. Its fur was red and white like the typical fox. Foxes...the being that made me into...This.

Ah, how rude of me. Before I explain, guess I should introduce myself. My name is Theresa. I didn’t know it back then, but my life was going to change forever at ten years old. Up until then. I lived a pretty normal life. I was your average ten year old girl living in Fairingham, Massachusetts. I had a mom, dad, and an older sister. I was told what every little kid gets told by grown ups- “You’re going to be something big one day!” “You’re going to grow up and make a difference!”, comments about how cute I was by relatives at family gatherings (then again, every kid gets told that by family don’t they?) Everything about me was average-average height for my age, average dark brown hair, average everything. I liked dolls and things labeled as ‘girl things’, but I also liked to play sports-Baseball was always my favorite. My dad and I would watch the Boston Red Sox whenever they played on TV, we even went to a couple games.

Now, what does a fox have to do with all of this? Well, that was just to explain what I was like before growing up...before the fox came along. When my mom was three months pregnant with me, she was outside raking leaves on a November afternoon when a fox approached her. It kept its distance as any fox would, keeping close to the woods as it sat down and watched her. Mom held her ground, sure it was just a fox and attacking humans was rare, but the thing could be rabid, and Mom wasn’t going to take a chance getting herself hurt while she was carrying me. The fox just watched her for a few minutes before running back into the forest.Mom and Dad thought this was strange, but decided to think nothing of it. Foxes were curious little creatures.

Little did they know that same fox was going to come back ten years later, changing their youngest daughter forever.

~~~

It was a nice day outside. Mom and Dad had to work. Catherine, my seventeen year old older sister was babysitting me. Of course when I was ten I had the ‘I don't need a babysitter’ argument. But, it wasn’t really babysitting. Just more of a ‘make sure your sister doesn’t get hurt and doesn’t set any fires on accident’...okay so maybe that’s babysitting. Catherine was also average like me, but I looked up to her as the ‘cool older sister’ like any little sister would. She was very into tech and was looking into some trade schools in the area. While I played outside, Catherine was inside sitting at her laptop. The screen door was being used currently to let some of the nice air in, and also so she could hear me in case I started to yell for her. I was outside playing some made up games and using my imagination. During this time, a fox was roaming around in the woods. I hadn’t noticed it-I was too busy with my imaginary game. The fox took notice of me and sat to watch. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the red and white as I stopped, looking over.

“Hello Mr. Fox.” I smiled. I thought it was the coolest thing to see a wild animal looking so calm and curious. The fox tilted their head at me, like it was pondering something. I looked over to the house, speaking in a loud whisper. “Catherine! Catherine! You gotta see this!” Perhaps Catherine didn’t hear me, or she was too engrossed in her laptop. I really wanted her to see the fox. Maybe she could grab some food from the pantry and we could toss the critter some, try and make friends.

As soon as I looked back to the fox, all I saw was a white light from its mouth. That’s all I processed before the white light flew at me, knocking me backwards. I hit the ground with a loud ‘oof!’ before the fox darted back into the woods. This got my sister’s attention as she was quickly outside running to me, asking what happened, if I was hurt, typical worried sister stuff.

“I’m fine.” I said, sitting up. “I just saw this fox near the woods. It opened its mouth up and this big bright light came out and hit me...I think.”

Catherine smiled a little. “You and your imagination.” She giggled. “Come on kid. Let’s get you some lunch. Maybe you just imagined stuff from being hungry.”

Could that be it? Maybe the bright light was from feeling faint in hunger. I was a little hungry, but not enough to be fainting. Perhaps it was dehydration too. Catherine and I went inside to have some lunch-those small instant meals you put in the microwave. I sat at the table while Catherine poured some juice for both of us. She started to sweat as she fanned herself while grabbing at the collar of her shirt. “It feels hot all of a sudden.” She commented. Strange. I didn’t feel anything. I did feel a bit warm, but I figured it was just from playing outside. We had lunch and I stayed in for the rest of the day. Catherine closed up the house and turned the air on to take this strange heat off.It went away after maybe half an hour or so.

Maybe that bright light was just my imagination as Catherine said. I decided not to tell my parents. They would probably agree with my sister and say I was just imagining things or that I was hungry or dehydrated.

A couple days later, I started to see a strange car in the neighborhood. We knew all of our neighbors, and with that we usually knew everyone’s cars. This one however I had never seen before in the area. It was a dark van with tinted windows. Mom seemed to notice it too and wouldn’t let me play outside alone. Dad wanted to go over and ask them what they were doing around here and was going to threaten calling the cops, but Mom stopped him-all the car did was sit there. Perhaps they were private investigators or doing some work that involved watching the neighborhood. Everyone was keeping an eye on them. As long as people were looking, we had nothing to worry about.

The strange thing was that it felt like the car was everywhere. When we’d go to the grocery store, I thought I would see it in the parking lot. When we went to church, it was off in the distance. I never saw anybody go in or out of it. It just seemed to sit there. Was it the same car? Maybe there was more than one and they were parked all over Framingham. But, it was a big city, and I never saw anything in the news about mysterious black vans spotted all over. I started to get a little paranoid. Did this have anything to do with the white light I thought I saw? Maybe they were following me. Or maybe my whole family was being followed. I decided to do a couple tests.

When Mom and I went to the grocery store a couple days later, I ducked down so I couldn’t be seen unless somebody was next to our car and looking in the windows. Mom thought it was strange, but shrugged it off as she pulled the car out of the garage and drove towards the store. Once we turned out of our neighborhood I sat upright, checking the rearview mirror. Nobody was following us. Maybe I was just being too worried.

As we left, there it was-the van-parked across the parking lot. I gulped. We had been followed. Did they wait a few minutes to trail behind us? How did they know where we were going? Maybe they weren’t following me. Maybe it was Mom they were following.

That night Mom and Dad went on their weekly date night. Catherine and I were left home with some leftovers to make. I watched from my bedroom window as Mom and Dad left, keeping an eye on the black van, but making sure I couldn’t be seen through the window. The van had been around for a couple weeks now-I noticed it left around the same time every day, only to come back half an hour later. This was usually once in the morning, and then once at night. Sometimes it left at other random times, but not for too long. Maybe it was to get food? The only other times it seemed to move when my family and I were going somewhere. As my parents pulled out of the driveway, the van stayed put. I waited. The van remained there. So maybe they weren’t following Mom. Maybe it  _ was _ me. 

The next morning I asked Dad if I could go bike to the park by myself. Dad seemed cautious, still worried about the van, but he eventually agreed-he knew I was careful about stranger danger, but called one of the neighbors who lived near the park to ask if they’d call him once they saw me there. I hopped onto my bike and started on my way. The park wasn’t too far from our house-only a couple blocks. I looked behind me each time, making sure the van wasn’t following me. It wasn’t. So they weren’t following me after all.

But I started to think,maybe they were listening in to our house somehow. I shrugged that idea off, I was getting too paranoid. I parked my bike and made my way to the playground at the park. I was the only kid there, which I didn’t mind. I was there for a few minutes before I saw some woman sitting on one of the benches, talking into an earpiece. Maybe it was one of those hands free phone kind of earpieces. She saw me looking and waved. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just waved back before continuing to play. I had never seen this woman before. Perhaps she was a new neighbor or was visiting a relative. Each time I looked over, she was either talking into the earpiece, looking at her phone, or writing something down. I readied myself to run at any moment. My parents had always taught me about stranger danger- I was to yell and run if a stranger tried to talk to me when I was alone, tried to grab me, or convince me to go with them. I had my bike nearby, but I was ready to run without it-I was pretty fast.

I stayed at the park for another half hour before I got back on my bike and left. The lady stayed there still communicating into the device. 

A couple days later, Mom and I went to the nearby strip mall, the dvd rental store to be exact. Mom had to return some movies and pick out some new ones for family nights. I wandered the aisles. There were comedy movies, action movies, animated movies, romance movies (ick!), horror movies, all kinds of genres. One cover in particular caught my eye-a menacing looking red dot with the title ‘2001-A Space Odyssey”. Dad told me about this movie before-it was a movie from the late 60’s about space travel in 2001-and how this machine on the ship, HAL,malfunctioned and went on a rampage. It sounded really scary to me. But maybe Dad would want to see it again.I picked that and another movie for myself to watch and met up with Mom, who had picked out a couple movies and we left for home.There was a couple in the store who had walked in shortly after we did. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I noticed them walking out empty handed. Strange.

Dad and I watched 2001 A Space Odyssey that night- Catherine wasn’t that interested and neither did Mom. It was really cool, but also scary-mainly the scenes with HAL. He was really nice sounding, but did some evil things. After the movie ended, Dad told me about how he had read the books after seeing the movie. He told me how in one book, HAL and Dave, the main character, had merged into one-called Halman. That was a strange idea to me-how could they have merged? What did they look like? Dad pulled it out from the bookshelf to show me-he looked almost like a ghost with white glowing eyes.

I didn’t really understand how HAL worked and what he was capable of, and Halman made me think of that bright white light I had seen almost a month ago. I decided to call the light HAL. Maybe we had merged like Halman. Part of me was still convinced I imagined it, but more and more I was starting to believe it actually happened. The weird black van and the feeling of being followed only made me believe it more.

The next day Mom and Dad went to work, leaving Catherine to babysit again. I was getting bored of playing by myself, so I asked my sister if I could bike to the park again by myself. She gave me the go ahead and went back to her laptop. I didn’t know what was so interesting on the computer- must’ve been something pretty exciting for my sister to be so interested. Maybe it was a fun game or one of those programming things. My only interest was to play games on the computer-being only ten didn’t give me too many options. I hopped on my bike and put my basket of chalk on the handlebar. Hopefully there would be some other kids at the park to play with.

When I got there, I was disappointed to see I was the only kid there yet again.But I wasn’t alone- that woman from the other day was there, except she wasn’t talking into a device or taking notes. It looked like she was reading a book. She must’ve heard me as she looked over and smiled. I politely smiled back as I started to play on the jungle gym. The lady had some kind of friendly vibes-like she wouldn’t hurt anyone. I knew better not to trust a stranger though- all the PSAs on TV showed the stranger being really nice and friendly before turning into a monster to lure kids away. After a bit, I started to get bored playing by myself and began to draw on the sidewalk. I doodled spirals, squiggles, a rainbow, whatever came to my mind. I was just finishing up a fox drawing when I looked up at the woman. She wasn’t paying attention and still read her book. I knew I shouldn’t be doing this, but I got up and walked over to her.

“What book are you reading?”

The woman looked up.”It’s called 2010: Odyssey Two”

“Is that like the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey?”

“Yes! Its the sequel. How do you know that movie? You’re pretty young to know a movie that old”

“My dad and I watched it yesterday. He has the books too. Is HAL in that book?”  
  
“I’m not that far yet. Maybe he comes back-that would be interesting.”

I nodded. “Ok! Sorry to bother you, ma’am” I turned to go back to my chalk.

“No problem, Theresa.”

….I hadn’t told her my name.

I stopped, slowly turning around. “Huh…? How do you-”

“I know a lot of things, Theresa. I know all about the fox. About the white light.”


End file.
